Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

Crisp-Man takes a big mouthful of crisps and crunches on them while holding his hand out like one of those exterminators that Dylan used to watch on reruns on telly up in the attic, while it rained outside and lights from the peep-show flashed on and off.

— That’s a bit excessive, mate.

— Excessive!

The guy’s voice rises to a high crescendo and a boy in front of them looks back and Crisp-Man tries to smile reassuringly at the kid, which clearly freaks him out even more. Crisp-Man attempts a whisper.

— I can’t take much more, mate, I tell ya. If this is it, if this Ice Age is because human beings are acting like a fucking cancer on this hereof beautiful planet — I, for one, think it’s not before time.

— Hereof?

— Yeah, fucking hereof. Hereof from now leave the earth in peace.

He gestures at the other passengers, who all look carefully away from his rising voice. The guy reaches into his bag for a hip-flask and swigs vodka down; he pulls out max-strength painkillers, pops three, then chases those with a few Pro Plus; he offers the box to Dylan, who puts his hand up.

— No, thanks.

— We’re a race of zombies fucking the earth into oblivion. Fucked-up. Beheading people like it’s Bingo! Look, Mum, see me on the internet with this bloke’s head in my hand and a big-fucking-knife! Say cheese! Woo hoo. It’s fucking trigger-happy time mate. That shit’s a medieval bloodbath. They act like they’re some kind of superior breed of murderer, like they’re murdering for Him upstairs so that makes them holy murderers. Or they’re murdering for governments so they’re hero murderers. Or for the police so they’re legal murderers. It’s all the same shit. Murder’s murder. Whichever way you dress it-the-fuck-up. I’m telling you … Or they’re murdering for governments so that’s A-okay. It’s all the same shit! I’m telling you, we have had it. You know what they’re saying — it’s the end of times, that’s what it fucking is.

Dylan tucks his hair behind his ear and his fingers hover where his thick polo-neck is bobbled, picked at the cuffs — he is clearly just a cuff-picker sat next to a crisp-muncher in what appears to be the end of times. Along the motorway trails of yellow and orange light race each other onto a bypass where a dark shape stands on the edge of a bridge. The figure raises an arm. Dylan glances back but he cannot see the shape any more. Behind them the sound of vomiting is replaced by a steady spitting — then silence.

If someone is nearly dead back there.

If they are.

Dylan is tempted to stand and declare — There’s a dead man in the bog, abandon bus, abandon the fucking bus! Call an ambulance, call his family! The passengers would turn around as one being, all hairdos and noses and fists and feet as they dealt with him. Then they’d be right back to their magazines and bags of sweets without even a rumour of emotion. The toilet cubicle is silent. Crisp-Man eyes him up. His gaze slides over Dylan’s Chelsea boots, faded jeans, polo-neck, his squint-nose and the height of him. The bus engine hums loudly as countryside begins to appear — dark outlines of watermills and chimneys, and in the middle of the road they drive around a roundabout where a dining table has been set up with place mats and flowers.

— Total madness. I’ve seen it all now. It could be one of them programmes — they’d call it Dinner on Location.

It’s a guffaw then — Crisp-Man — pleased with himself and more inventive than anyone might think. Looks like meat on legs but something is inside that rubbery dome — probably just a little drunk guy on a bicycle, cycling around, but he has a point, or two, to make. Dylan nods in some kind of a response and the guy grins widely at him.

— I’m on the oil rigs again, six weeks on this time, winter or no winter, I need the money for the missus. She goes to Brussels for lipo and that; lipo on the brain she has. New tits. New nose. She’s had her sagging moaning face dragged up around her ears. I own it, though. I own that nose. I’m telling you, it’s mine!

Dylan unwraps a bar of chocolate.

He’s never owned someone else’s nose, not someone else’s sagging moaning face, certainly hasn’t — not even an eyelash. The roads are sparser and the heater filters on and on and the air is too hot. Sleep announces itself as a heaviness — a fug that he falls into — a density to it that makes it a struggle to rise back up, and the engine drones louder until noise becomes everything — night-lights shine down and distort the passengers’ features while traffic signs and roadworks fly past the window.

EVEN IN the dark there is a clear outline of mountains. It was freezing in London but this is like the Arctic. Dylan climbs into the back of a cab with tartan seat covers and shows the driver an address and they make a U-turn. He wraps his arms around himself, already shivering as they drive out of the station past big Georgian houses, then what looks like a park and city streets, the last he imagines he will see for some time. The scenery turns into suburbia until eventually a bridge rises — defiantly lit. The driver turns the heating up but it barely warms the back of the cab. Dylan peers up at the bridge and pulls his coat tighter around himself — look at that: what a feat of engineering! The bridge is built on a solid suspension system with metal joists that criss-cross against a wide tidal estuary. As they drive onto the bridge there are flashes of criss-cross, criss-cross, criss-cross, the shadows flicker over the driver’s face. The car thuds over each section and the rhythm is relaxing. Roll-thud, roll-thud, criss-cross, criss-cross. Out on the sea there is a huge cruise liner and further out what looks like oil platforms, and then a lighthouse flashes somewhere along the coast. A few seconds later another lighthouse appears to flash back a response, a little yellow light and a circle around it — right out on the water.

The cab motors up a hill. It leans into curves and dips on narrow roads so that Dylan gets butterflies. Mountains rise up on either side of them, some so big and craggy the car feels tiny on the windy roads. There are no street lights out here. The headlight beam picks out features as they turn corners; occasionally a traditional croft house or bothy is lit up, way out in the middle of a valley. What must it be like to open your front door to all that vastness each day? Dylan leans back, tired now, and after an hour or so they drive past a row of industrial estates with warehouses and Japanese car showrooms filled with four-wheel drives. The cab takes a sharp turn down a country road and through two wooden gates. Dylan takes out his wallet and removes four notes. He pays the driver and takes the receipt out of habit. She chews gum and drives away with her window down and one hand raised. A nice gesture in the dead of night.

He can make out actual planets, the skies are so clear.

This caravan park is so — quiet.

Dylan looks up at millions and millions of stars, clusters and trails, and as he turns around in a circle he finds the entire Clachan Fells region is surrounded by vast mountains. Hemmed in. When he looked online he could see Clachan Fells as a spine of land in between the sea and farmland, but he imagined it flat. He follows a route through the caravan park that seems right even though he couldn’t get the address properly on his phone app.

Of all the places Vivienne could have picked.

The caravans are mostly quite big, not like the picture of the one his mother bought. An ambulance is parked outside one mobile home, an ice-cream van outside another. Some have lights flickering behind their curtains, the sounds of televisions or people talking. There is a ferry link near here that will take him up to the islands so he can scatter their ashes. That might take a week or two, then if he can sell the caravan maybe he could go somewhere warmer, Vietnam or Cambodia.